[Haskell-cafe] partial functions / failure, Maybe and MonadError and good style

[Stefan O'Rear]

On Sat, Dec 23, 2006 at 02:33:51AM +0100, Lennart Augustsson wrote:
> I would not advocate using the fail operation in a monad.  It doesn't  
> belong there, and hopefully it will go away some day. :)

On Fri, Dec 22, 2006 at 08:37:05PM -0500, Steve Downey wrote:
> OK, but is msg always a string? Admidtedly, in the concrete case I
> have at hand (follow up posting RSN), that would be fine.
> I think I've also been looking at the map lookup case, where not only
> is lookup failure to be expected, it's almost an imposition to say
> something other than Nothing.

There is a more general form of monads that support failure,
Control.Monad.Error.MonadError in the extended standard libraries; 

throwError noMsg    :: (Error e, MonadError e m) => m a
throwError . strMsg :: (Error e, MonadError e m) => String -> m a

Error is any type that strings can be mapped into (I'm not talking about
an injection, I just can't find a better word), such as String and IOError.

Unfortunately there does not seem to be a standard instance for Maybe...

-- This isn't in the standard library, and thus I conjecture that it
-- is seriously flawed in a way I haven't noticed.

instance Error () where noMsg = () ; strMsg _ = ()
instance MonadError () Maybe where
    throwError _ = Nothing

    Just x  `catchError` f = Just x
    Nothing `catchError` f = f ()